Advertising Cthulhu

 

 

 

 

Cthulhu's followers were a secretive bunch, but it seemed the harder they tried to conceal their existence, the more problems they had with police, private detectives, academics, and pulp writers doing everything they can to delve into their mysteries and throw monkey wrenches into their schemes. Not that these daring individuals could help themselves. Man was by a nature a creature of immeasurable curiosity and insatiable discontent. He wants nothing more than to have what he has been told he cannot possess or to learn what he is not meant to know. For centuries the cultists presumed the answer was more secrecy. After all, if the rest of society knew nothing of the Old One's existence, how could they pry? But then jealous wives wondered where their husbands went when they claimed to be bowling and meddlesome police inquired into the disappearances around town.

In 1987, when the stars were almost right, they stumbled upon the answer. The old truth held that the more man was told he should not have something, the more he wanted it, but so too was its unspoken reciprocate. Man wanted nothing to do with anything required of him. The cult began to publicize their activities, to print books and games about their dark lord. They merchandised action figures and vests and Franklin Mint commemorative plates. They preached door-to-door. They made Cthulhu so ubiquitous that cultists could now freely do as they pleased, for the last thing anyone wanted was to learn a fellow was into the Great Old One and be forced to spend the rest of the night listening to him prattle on about how glorious it would be when Lord Cthulhu rose from his slumber and devoured the world.

“What are you doing?” police would ask cloaked men holding knives to a bound man's throat.

“Making a sacrifice to Cthulhu, who-”

“Enough!” the police would cry. “I don't need to know all that.”

And he would then fake an important call from dispatch to extricate himself from the ensuing lecture.

 

- Originally mailed to J. Tahon of De Haan, Belgium